On Sunday I referenced a quote from John Calvin and candidly admitted that I resisted the label of “Calvinist” for the first 15 years of my ministry and am still a bit reluctant to use it. A lady from our church wrote me an email seeking clarification as to what I meant and what Calvinism was all about. It occurred to me that perhaps other folks were unfamiliar with this term and might benefit from sharing in the dialogue. I responded with the following:
Answer:
Your question was partly biographical (my relationship to “Calvinism”) and partly theological (“what is Calvinism”?) so I will attempt to craft an answer that is similarly balanced. I grew up in an independent baptistic church that was avidly Dispensational in their theology. Dispensationalism is a form of Protestant theology that became popular in North America in the 20th century. It involves a very complicated set of relationships between the covenants in the Bible and tends to adopt an Old Testament reading of the New Testament rather than the more classically Protestant New Testament reading of the Old Testament. In essense, they read the Bible forwards instead of backwards and they tend to have a split track understanding of God’s plan of redemption with Israel operating under a different set of rules then the Gentile church.
I went to Moody Bible Institute after High School and for the first time in my life ran across a bunch of Evangelical Calvinists. On my dorm floor, the guys were split pretty evenly between PCA Calvinists and small church Dispensationalists like me. The big argument was always about whether the land promises were transposed into spiritual promises to all the church and whether the rapture was coming and whether infant baptism was good or bad and whether election was really in the Bible or just a figment of Calvin’s imagination. I grew to despise both systems as little more then man made programs designed to maximize minute issues and create divisions between believers. When I went to University and later to seminary, I resolved to reject all systems and labels and to become a “Biblicist”. For the first 12-15 years of my ministry life I steadfastly refused to allow myself to be labeled. The more I learned the Biblical languages and studied exegesis and theology the more convinced I was that Dispensationalism was wrong and potentially a threat to the Gospel. I had no problem telling people I was NOT a Dispensationalist but I would not let them call me a Calvinist. I was a Biblicist and later and by conviction a Baptist in the historic, Spurgeonistic sense.
During that time I read and acquired many books by Calvin and found them to be extremely faithful treatments of Scripture. I found it frustrating how he could say in a sentence what I struggled to say in a 4000 page essay and I was deeply humbled and chastened to think how much time I had wasted trying to solve all theological issues independently when so much of the spade work had been done by godly people in the past. I had many experiences when I was struggling to relate two seeming contradictions in the Bible (for example, the Sovereign election of God on the one hand and the obvious human responsibility on the other) only to read Calvin’s treatment of the subject which immediately brought much need clarity and closure. I began more and more to wish I had gone to Calvin earlier in my struggles rather than using him at the end to test my own conclusions. Finally, about 5 years ago I finally resigned to the fact that I was for all intents and purposes, a Calvinist. I had climbed the mountain of exegesis and Biblical theology only to find Calvin waiting for me at the summit! It was a pretty irritating experience.
I still prefer not to use the label because it seems to arouse hostility in a lot of people for reasons I’m not sure I understand. Perhaps they like me, have heard too many arguments in the past about this fellow “Calvin” and now cannot think of him as anything other than a rabble rouser. If given the opportunity to label myself, I will say that I am first and foremost a Christian, second an Evangelical in the historic sense, and then third a convictional Baptist in the traditional Spurgeonistic sense.
Of course, to say that you are a traditional Baptist is to say covertly that you are a Calvinist. The early Baptists were very Calvinistic and this is reflected in their early statements. Our own founding fathers here at FBC were unashamedly Calvinistic. I recently read through our original indenture papers which were submitted to the Town of Orillia in order to get tax exemption on our first property. In the document we were required to provide a paragraph summary of our beliefs; listen to some of what our grandparents thought to include:
“The trustees of the Orillia Regular Baptist Church upon trust that the same shall be held for the use, for the purposes aforesaid, of the members of a Regular Baptist Church, which church shall be exclusively composed of persons who have been baptized by immersion, on a personal profession of their faith in Christ, and holding to the following doctrines, that is to say: The being and unity of God; the existence of three equal persons in the Godhead; the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments; the total depravity of man; election according to the foreknowledge of God; the Divinity of Christ and the all sufficiency of his atonement; justification by faith alone in the righteousness of Christ; the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; perseverance of the saints; the resurrection of the dead; the final judgment; the punishment of the wicked, and the blessedness of the righteous……”
They went on to state a few things about communion and church membership also, but for our purposes, what is interesting is that in this little paragraph they felt compelled to mention three classically Calvinistic doctrines: total depravity, election and the perseverance of the saints. We still preach on those things today 140 years later! My journey in wrestling with the Scriptures took me right back to the place our grandparents stood way back in 1874. I see that as the grace of God in my life and I’m thankful for that process.
As for your question about the nature of what is called “Calvinism” I would probably be wise simply to direct you to John Piper’s new book called Five Points. If you are interested click here.
Piper, a Baptist pastor in Minnesota (recently retired) does a fantastic job of summarizing Calvinism from a Baptist point of view. Baptists tend to hold to a Calvinistic soteriology (how people get saved) but differ from Calvin on ecclesiology (how the church should be put together and governed). In a nutshell, Calvinism means believing in a Sovereign God, a sinful man, and a gracious salvation in Christ. God is large and in charge, human beings are dead in the water and God has to help us before we can believe – that is the bulk of my “Calvinism” but I still prefer to call it “Biblicism”. It is what the Bible teaches about God, about people and about the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ so that no one can boast in the presence of the Lord. I hope that helps.